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The Regular Guest at the Old Inn
The owner of a riverside inn notices that on the eve of Qingming each year, Room 301 is booked under the same handwriting, though the guest never shows his face. By morning the bed is untouched but for an old ferry ticket for a line that stopped running decades ago.
The Night Toll Booth
Lao Chen works the night toll booth on the ring road. At 3:07 each night a dark-windowed sedan pulls up and hands him a fistful of water-soaked old coins. He later learns a car went into the river there twenty years ago.
Midnight Records: The Paper Child
Gou the paper craftsman breaks his own rule and models a paper child on a dead boy; on the seventh night the cut paper flowers lie in a ring, and the paper sleeve sways as if to reach them.
Midnight Records: The Porcelain Mender
Zhou the porcelain mender mends a celadon bowl for a widowed old man at night — and beneath the glaze a tiny picture of a lantern-bearing child appears, the very image of the man when young.
The Watchmaker's Night Call
An old watch repairman's disconnected phone rings at three each night with the sound of ticking. He realizes it is a watch looking for the owner who never came back.
Midnight Records: The Watchman's Drum
Old Fan keeps the night watch for forty years; on snowing nights a second drum keeps the third watch for him — from a red lacquered coffin in the Bai family yard.
The Night Shift at the Convenience Store
A man buys a bottle of water at 2:13 every night and never drinks it. The clerk learns he is only waiting by the window, for someone who used to stand there.
Midnight Records: The Night Ferry
Old Cui ferries a red-coated woman across the misty Qinghe River one night — a woman who had no bus to miss, and who leaves behind his late wife's brass locket, not a footprint.